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Ugly End Game at Damascus~The White House’s Syria War Initiative is lost~by high numbers in the House~The President is finished as a leader on any level~and if he bombs Syria without authority he will be both impeached and convicted~Speaker Boehner and Leader Cantor placed bad bets on Syria and will lose their jobs over this fiasco as well they should~meanwhile~internationally~the Syria debacle has left America yet more weakened, rudderless, ineffective and lethargic~

President Barack Obama appears to be dangerously close to what would be a historic rebuke at the hands of Congress, if the current whip-count projections on the authorization to attack Syria continue to hold.

Pundits on both sides of the aisle say losing the high-stakes bid for congressional authorization would make Obama an instant lame-duck, and might well endanger his entire second-term agenda.

The resolution authorizing an attack on Syrian strongman Bashar Assad, as punishment for his use of chemical weapons against his own people, is still expected to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate.

But the real question mark all along has been whether the administration could muster enough support to get the attack resolution through the House. And there, the situation for the administration appears to be growing dimmer by the hour.

Various news organizations are contacting members of Congress to see where they stand on the attack authorization. While each outlet has different numbers, the ominous sign for the administration is that all of them show the “no” votes outpacing the “yes” votes by a more than a 3-1 margin.

Most alarming for the administration may be The Washington Post whip count.

The Post has contacted 371 of the 435 members of the House. Of those contacted, 204 representatives are against authorization or leaning against it. That compares to 24 members in favor and 143 members who are undecided, and 48 of the undecided representatives are Republicans.

Of the undecided members, the Post reports, many of them have yet to receive the administration’s intelligence briefing on the sarin gas attack in Syria. About 25 percent of those opposed to the authorization are Democrats, which means the resistance to the proposal is clearly bipartisan.

Of course, there’s always the chance that last-minute lobbying by the administration will change the political calculus. But with an election year looming and both the Democratic and GOP bases opposed to further military excursions in the Middle East, the Obama administration appears to be in serious trouble.

Obama canceled a scheduled trip on Monday to California so he can remain in Washington to lobby legislators before the vote. There are indications he also may make a nationally televised address in a bid to rally public support.

The concern that Congress might balk at authorizing the attack, just as the House of Commons did in Britain, was precisely the reason several Obama aides argued strongly against the president’s surprise announcement on Saturday to ask Congress to OK his war plans against Syria.

On Thursday afternoon, as the whip counts were being tallied, the realization dawned in the nation’s capital that President Obama is perilously close to what would be an historic, humiliating international rebuke.

To date, no major military power or international organization has supported Obama’s stated intention to launch a cruise-missile barrage at Assad, the so-called “shot across the bow.”

Aaron Blake and Sean Sullivan of The Washington Post reported the prospects for getting the measure through the House “are looking progressively dimmer for the Obama administration.”

On Wednesday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent the resolution to the full Senate chamber by a 10-7 vote. But by Thursday, there appeared to be a growing groundswell of opinion against the proposal.

On his radio program Thursday, Fox host Geraldo Rivera announced that he had changed his mind and will now oppose the initiation of any hostilities against Assad, saying, “I can’t support this decision to get involved in the Syrian civil war.”

In an email statement to Newsmax, Rivera elaborated on his change of heart.

“If a punitive strike is called for in Syria,” Rivera said in an email, “why wasn’t a punitive strike called for in Libya after Ambassador Stevens and his three brave colleagues were killed last year in Benghazi?

“Assad committed a crime against humanity. It’s the world’s job to punish [him], not just ours.”

The veteran newsman and commentator went on to predict that the resolution will fail.

“Congress will not approve this, and the president must not defy the obvious and growing opposition to this ill-advised and admittedly ill-defined act,” he wrote. “Once a missile is lobbed, there is no such thing as a limited and measured result.”

If Obama were to lose on the key congressional vote, the political repercussions would be profound.

Veteran pollster and columnist Matt Towery of Insider/Advantage Polling tells Newsmax that Obama’s support in the House looks so shaky right now it could even begin to cost him support in the Senate.

“I think the president is in extraordinarily deep trouble, as are the House leaders who put their necks out on this,” Towery tells Newsmax.

He added that with the vote in the House scheduled soon after Congress returns to session on Sept. 9, the clock is already running out for Obama to recapture the momentum.

“The sense of urgency is about to be lost here,” he said.

Democratic pollster and Fox News commentator Doug Schoen, a contributor to Newsmax magazine, says that everyone will lose if support for the resolution implodes.

“Obama will seek to blame the Republicans if he loses the vote on Syria, as he has with issue after issue, time after time. On this occasion,” he said, “I believe the strategy will fail — if only because as the United States comes to look weaker and weaker, so too will President Obama.”

The biggest losers in the battle, Towery says, may be House Leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor, because they have voiced support for the measure.

“I don’t think this will be a history-making failure on Obama’s part, because I think his presidency is basically at a point where it is viewed as ineffective and pretty much at its end anyway. This may be the bow at the top of the package marking the ineffectiveness in the second term. But I don’t think this will be a new emblem of failure. I mean, we’re already there,” Towery said.

But he added: “It would be very difficult for Boehner and Cantor to be re-elected to leadership of the House, with this sort of revolt on their hands.”

He also called the division within the GOP between the leadership and the base “a harbinger of things to come.”

“A Republican Party that is barely holding itself together at the seams in my opinion is splitting itself apart,” Towery said. “In my opinion, that’s almost as big a story as a president who in his second term is proving to be almost completely ineffective.”

Meanwhile~~outside the American Zone~~things look substantially less pleasant for the Americans~~

Friday, September 6, 2013

President Obama Faces Sharp Criticism on Syria Plan at G20 Summit

Top News: President Obama was met with a skeptical crowd of world leaders as he made the case for military strikes in Syria at the meeting of the G20 yesterday in St. Petersburg, Russia. China and Russia issued sharp rebukes, with Russian President Vladimir Putin going so far to say that Secretary of State John Kerry deliberately misled members of Congress in his testimony this week. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon stressed the need for any intervention to have the approval of the U.N. Security Council, though U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power told reporters yesterday that the United States will not press for such a resolution given Russia and China’s obstinacy. Members of the European Union questioned the likely effectiveness of planned strikes, and the Catholic Church called for the international community to use peaceful means to resolve the Syrian civil war.

In other discussions at the G20 summit, Russia warned that the international community must guard against a potential relapse into an economic crisis as the United States begins selling foreign currency reserves. The United States, Russia, and China signaled that they would be less receptive to future proposals for bailouts for faltering countries and called on developing nations to restructure their economies before its too late. The BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — announced a plan for a $100 billion currency reserve to be tapped in the event of a balance of payments crisis.

Syria: President Obama instructed planners at the Pentagon to expand its list of potential targets based on new intelligence of Syrian troop movements. On Capitol Hill, where debates continue as to whether Congress should authorize the use of military force against Syria, some lawmakers are casting doubts on Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s testimony that strike would cost only “tens of millions of dollars.”

Americas

Brazil is accelerating a new information security regime for government communications in light of recent revelations that it was a target of NSA spying.

Jose Trevino Morales, brother of two leaders of Mexican drug cartel Los Zetas, wasconvicted by a U.S. court to 20 years in prison for money laundering in a horse racing scheme.

Asia

The South Korean parliament voted to allow riot police to arrest extreme left-wing politician Lee Seok-Ki on charges of sedition.

Sushmita Banerjee, whose memoir of her marriage and escape from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan was an Indian bestseller, was assassinated by Taliban gunmen in Paktika Province.

South Korea has banned the import of fish from eight Japanese prefectures in response to concerns about leaking radiation from the damaged Fukushima plant.

Middle East

The United States government has intercepted an Iranian order to attack U.S. interests in Iraq in the event of a U.S. strike in Syria, the Wall Street Journalreports.

The Syrian government has deployed reinforcements to the predominantly Christian town of Maaloula, north of Damascus, which was attacked by Islamic extremist rebels this week.

A spokesman for the Egyptian government denied that a decision to dissolve the Muslim Brotherhood has been reached.

Africa

Kenyan lawmakers have passed a preliminary motion to withdraw from the International Criminal Court in response to ICC charges against Kenya’s president and deputy president; passage of a bill formalizing the withdrawal is forthcoming.

Oil company Shell has announced it will negotiate compensation for 15,000 Nigerians who were affected by oil spills from Shell-operated pipelines in 2008.

The leaders of several Central African nations have called for the resumption of peace talks between the Congolese government and the M23 rebels in the next three days.

Europe

A new bill proposed in the Russian Duma would allow the government to take custody of the children of gay parents.

German police raided the enclave of a Christian religious sect on grounds of suspected child abuse, taking custody of 40 children.

The European Union threatened to bring legal action against Croatia if it does not alter extradition laws protecting figures from the country’s 1990s war for independence.

End Game at Damascus~The White House’s Syria War Initiative is lost~by high numbers in the House~The President is finished as a leader on any level~and if he bombs Syria without authority he will be both impeached and convicted~Speaker Boehnerand Leader Cantor placed bad bets on Syria and will lose their jobs over this fiasco as well they should~

President and Mrs. Assad~~whose jobs likewise~~are in grave jeopardy~~